In an ideal world what would you have liked to hear Starmer say!

[punkhairbrush]

i genuinely was really disappointed with his speech and feel he and the Labour Party on all fronts are so out of touch with why the public are frustrated. I would have liked to have heard the following

1. some support for small business. And incentive for people to open small businesses
2. I would have liked to hear some proposals on kick starting the property market and help with first time buyers. There is a lot of stock for sale at the moment, it’s not moving. So some help with stamp duty etc could help first time buyers get property.
3. innovative and exciting ways that make work pay.
4. Some kind of quick win for everyone - a new savings account etc etc! Not more benefits for people already on benefits.

Poli

Tax cuts for business, especially smaller ones, but for all businesses really. Reverse the stupid increases in employers NIC. Reduce corporation tax to make us competitive with other countries again. Hassle free grants to encourage businesses to take on the unemployed and young people and hassle free grants to encourage people to start their own businesses/self employments. Get the economy moving again and increase growth.

@Badbadbunnythese all sound great! I find it fucking infuriating there is so little to kickstart the economy in his speech! Nothing exciting at all - great about younger people being able to travel to Europe but that’s only so it can make the unemployment figures look better! How can they be so short sighted

An admission that the lockdowns which he and his party cheered on caused massive economic damage; it would have been even better if he had said it in 2020.

An admission that living is now so expensive for many people (who earn much less than him and his MPs), and what he is doing to make things easier.

This

How could they possibly not know?

Some great ideas above.

An agreement with France that we can load people from the Kent beaches into a boat and sail them straight back to France.

It will only need doing for a week.

Please don't anyone answer with "we could have done that of we hadn't had Brexit" because whilst that is partly true, if we were still in the EU we would have to take whatever share of "refugees" the EU doled out to us, and since Spain has just given official recognition to half a million, and Hungary and Estonia are in court for refusing theirs, it wouldn't be the right answer.

"some sort of quick win" - of course, why did nobody think of the quick win that would definitely make everyone happy straightaway and then simply do that!

@CreativeGreenso condescending!

It's a valid point. He couldn't have made a speech containing your vague non-actionable points. Certainly not without being lambasted for being vacuous.

Do you have any specific ideas that he could have announced?

I wrote them above. And I said just simple win like a new type of ISA/savings account. Some incentives to help new business start ups! Anything would have been better to be honest than the drivel he came out with that was nothing new!

There was no substance to anything in your list. What kind of incentives?

Secretary.

He had weeks to prepare his "big" speech as everyone knew Labour were going to get badly hit in the local elections. He knew it was coming, so should have been ready with pre-prepared speech and pre-prepared plans to address the issues/failures of his first couple of years. In the event, he'd done bugger all preparation (again) and gave a meaningless lacklustre speech which doesn't even touch the sides of the problems. Just like he had years before he won the last GE to plan for taking power, and again, he had nothing "ready to go" except the politics of envy on farmer's IHT and VAT on private schools - it was, frankly, pathetic, that Labour had no plan for when they got into power. All he did was order lots of "reviews" and "enquiries" into how to change things - mostly taking a couple of years or more, so he has caused a vacuum for his first two years, during which unemployment has risen, GDP increases are worse than many other comparable countries, we have very low economic growth, increased public sector inefficiency and lower public sector productivity. He had two years to come up with his "relaunch" and several weeks to plan to shake things up after the inevitable and obvious local election losses. He has failed miserably and there's no way he can cling on to the PM job for much longer. Today's speech was his last chance saloon to prove to people that he had a plan to turn things around and he buggered it up spectacularly. Dead man walking!

I'd like to hear him say that the Labour Party are going to stop trying to be Tory-lite and are going to return to some socialist values, but that's unlikely to happen.

All these are mere sticking plasters. He'd need to announce a complete change in direction. Announcing a handful of new policies isn't what I'd be satisfied with.